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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25398544">whose other side is salvation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome'>Chrome</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Bugs &amp; Insects, Caduceus Clay Needs a Hug, Dark Fantasy, Divine wrath, Getting Together, Horror, Hurt Caduceus Clay, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mighty Nein as Family, Mutilation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:22:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,908</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25398544</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Fjord and Caduceus are arrested for worshipping the Wildmother while passing through a small town in the Empire and pay an unfathomable price. While the Mighty Nein flee to Xhorhas to pick up the pieces, the consequences spill far beyond the reaches of a little town square.</p><p>There is only so long any Empire can deny a God--and very little the Wildmother will not do in defense of her children.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Caduceus Clay &amp; The Mighty Nein, Caduceus Clay/Fjord</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>70</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>381</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>whose other side is salvation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/indefensibleselfindulgence/gifts">indefensibleselfindulgence</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“This does seem like overkill,” Caduceus remarks.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is sitting down—has been sitting down, in fact, since about twenty minutes after he and Fjord were put in the cell, when it became clear it was not going to be a short wait. Fjord has opted to continue standing, although depending how long not-short is, he’s pretty sure he’ll end up next to Caduceus soon enough. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At least the floor is dirt and not stone. Better yet, he’s in a cell with his wrists bound with rope, not a cage like those horrible days with the Iron Shepherds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord suppresses a shudder at the memory of his own fear, of Yasha mostly unconscious and Jester a whirlwind of tears. Caduceus just looks resigned, and maybe a little amused. Fjord assumes that part of it is that the fine threatened for worship of unsanctioned gods is hardly on the threat level of being sold into slavery. And of course, very little seems to frighten Caduceus overtly. The guards and trappings of this medium-sized jail certainly have not managed it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, Fjord has seen Caduceus terrified before and not realized before he was told. Perhaps he just doesn’t know how to look.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For his part, Fjord can’t work up any real terror. The rest of the Nein had made a big fuss, of course—Beau had whipped out her expositor credentials, Veth had not-so-subtly reached for her crossbow. But ultimately it just wasn’t worth it. Fjord feels nervous, kind of like an idiot for being too obvious (his symbol is still pinned to his cloak) but Caleb and Beau, and the guard, had all indicated that the sentence for unsanctioned worship was a ten-gold fine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord has well more than ten gold to spare, and if it means there’s one more place they can show their faces again and not kill a bunch of townsfolk who haven’t processed who they’re dealing with, then hells, he’ll spend a couple hours in a jail. They didn’t even take his shit, let him hand it all to the rest of the Nein instead. He could technically draw his sword although he doesn’t really fancy his odds, fighting with his wrists bound.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The guard who put them down here said the magistrate would come and process them, when he got back. Fjord had liked her, or at least felt a little bad. She was young and seemed off-balance with them, and she wasn’t at all mean-spirited. There’d been a sort of what-can-you-do camaraderie, really. Fjord’s favorite arrest experience so far, even though he’s still kind of embarrassed about the whole thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come down here,” Caduceus says, breaking through his thoughts. “Let’s meditate.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The audacity of doing something that Fjord considers to be part of his worship to the Wildmother while sitting in a cell for the crime of worshipping the Wildmother is not lost on Fjord. He can’t tell if it’s lost on Caduceus; the firbolg has his eyes half-lidded, looks calm, but Fjord knows he’s got a hell of a mischievous streak. Still, Fjord sits down across from him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Want to do it silently?” Caduceus asks, one eye opening fully, and Fjord knows he has definitely clocked what it means to be doing this here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Fjord says, in a fit of what is either bravery or pique. “You talk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Later, he is helplessly grateful for whatever impulse compelled him to say yes, considering what happens after. At least he has that last untainted moment of Caduceus’ voice, washing over him in the darkness, the cool earth floor sticking to his shins.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There are birds outside,” Caduceus says, slowly. “Singing. It’s spring now, and they know it. They may not think of the Wildmother the same way we do, but they know Her and Her gifts all the same. They feel the wind we do, and see the sky. When it rains they will feed on the worms who come up, and be grateful, and the worms who live will be grateful for the rich damp soil, and the plants will grow from the soil they fertilize, and the fruits of them will be eaten by the animals, and by us, and when you hear the birds you can hear some part of all of that and feel yourself within it. Isn’t that great?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord can hear the birds, and he drifts a little after that, Caduceus’ voice coming from a distance. A part of all of that. Sometimes he begins to feel it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is surprised, then, when they both open their eyes again and the guard is standing there. She looks oddly pale.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You praying, then?” she asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In a way,” Caduceus says. “Not trying to cause more trouble, of course.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She nods, smiles, but something has changed about her expression between now and when she put them in the cell. Her heart’s not in it. “Come with me,” she orders. “I have to bind your ankles.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Magistrate isn’t coming down here?” Fjord asks, curious. He holds still and lets her tie the rope, and so does Caduceus. It gives them enough slack to walk, if they mind their steps; definitely not enough slack to run.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” she says, and bites her lip. “He…no. This way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That should have been the cue, he thinks later. Should have cut and run during the shuffle down the hall to the outside, when there is no mid-level bureaucrat to write them a ticket and receipt for their gold and shoo them on their way. Instead there is a crowd, and twenty more guards, and a wooden platform, and standing way at the end of it is a man in the dress of a priest of Erathis, who has the ugliest smile that Fjord has ever seen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he sees them, he steps forward. The guard leads them out onto the dais. There’s not—a crowd, exactly, Fjord has seen executions and this isn’t it—but there’s too many people here for what this is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Too many people for what this was supposed to be, anyway: a quick discussion with the magistrate and the payment of a fine. He isn’t sure what this is now. There is a guard on each of his sides, and two more beside Caduceus. The one who brought them up here has slipped back to stand behind him and he can’t get a look at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord scans the crowd and sees Yasha first. Her expression has shifted to—not quite rage, but concern, certainly—and she is trying to push through towards them, but a guard draws a sword on her and she takes a hasty step back. This was what they wanted to avoid, a fight on their behalf. The rest of the Mighty Nein is following, posturing. Fjord and Caleb make brief eye contact. Caleb looks afraid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The prisoners have been charged with the worship of forbidden gods,” the priest says, “And have admitted their guilt.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had felt pretty stupid to protest a ten gold fine, at the time, but Fjord is regretting that now. Do they need a trial? Do they want a trial? Does the Dwendalian Empire just make a big fucking deal out of paying a traffic ticket?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels a deep unease in his bones. He opens his mouth to protest and the guard, the one he liked, jerks at his elbow. “Don’t,” she says into his ear. “It will be worse.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He twists his head to try and look at her. He’s trying to figure it out. Where is the magistrate? Is the priest the magistrate? That seems a little bit unfair, although shouldn’t a priest of Erathis go easy on them, since she’s Melora’s girlfriend and all?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What will be worse?” he whispers back. He can’t find Caleb in the crowd now, is trying to read his face—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For bringing to this city the worship of forbidden gods—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just the one,” Caduceus says, and Fjord is too twisted up in nerves to laugh but it’s funny.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“—your punishment will ensure that you will not preach these false values again,” the priest’s voice rings out. “You are sentenced to lose your tongue.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The words don’t make sense. Fjord blinks. He can’t process it. He does process an enraged cry, from the crowd, which he will only later realize was Veth. Simultaneous with the shout, the guards on either side of Caduceus grip his jaw, and wrench it open, and a third guard steps forward and Fjord sees the blade shoved into his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He summons the Star Razor, slams an elbow into the guard at his side. He can’t get it twisted around enough to cut his wrists free, and a guard hits him with a baton and the sword slips from his hand and he resummons it, it vanishes and reappears but it’s too late—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is the </span>
  <em>
    <span>thwack-thwack </span>
  </em>
  <span>of arrows—one Caleb’s acid arrow, one from Veth’s crossbow. The acid one slams into one of the guards holding Caduceus. The crossbow strikes the guard trying to whack Fjord with the baton. Fjord struggles, twists, can’t see Caduceus through the crush of people—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus lets out a horrible sound, like the cry of a wounded animal. There is no silence between the end of his scream and the beginning of the beating of wings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That new sound, that strange click and whirr, is loud enough to distract from the fighting. Then it grows louder still, from a hum to a strange atonal buzz. Insects, some synapse in Fjord's brain finally provides. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He breaks free from the cluster of guards to look at Caduceus. He has the vague, absurd thought that Caduceus' last prayer was to cast Spirit Guardians, but Caduceus is bent double, blood flowing from his mouth like a reddish-black water spout. The guards on either side have let go, their work done. The one with the knife stands before Caduceus, the blade dripping red. In his hand is--this strange small wet thing, also dripping blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like a chunk of flesh or a--</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the realization hits, Fjord retches, overwhelmed with revulsion. It takes him a moment--too long of a moment--to master himself, to prepare to fight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except he doesn’t need to, because the man </span>
  <em>
    <span>who has just cut Caduceus’s tongue from his mouth</span>
  </em>
  <span> does not have time to even turn to Fjord, let alone bring the knife to bear against him, before he is hit by the cloud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The beetles are so tightly packed that they look like a singular being. The swarm writhes and clicks and devours--at first the man is screaming as they cover his face, so close together it's like a blanket of them, as they bore into his eyes. Then they fill his mouth and he is silenced.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord feels the brush of wings and little legs and flinches instinctively, but they settle only at his wrists and ankles, devouring the rope rather than his flesh or his clothes. They part as he goes to Caduceus, seething and hissing and devouring around him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All around him is the buzzing and the screaming. He reaches Caduceus and the beetles are parted around him, too, some of them settled in his hair, on his shoulders, but they do not bite, they just rest there for a wingbeat and then take off again. He watches one land on the angled slope of Caduceus' ear and then take off again and is reminded, absurdly, of watching Marion Lavorre gently brush a strand of Jester's hair behind her ear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What is this?" Fjord asks, raising his voice over the buzz of the swarm. Caduceus just shakes his head and then doesn't stop. There is blood all down his front.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Let's find the others," Fjord says gently. The guards aren’t even looking at them now, so Fjord lets the sword vanish. Caduceus allows himself to be led, and the insects move around them like an iridescent cloak of wings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The others are fighting, when they reach them, against the guards and the acolytes of Erathis and anyone else who gets brave enough to try to stop them. It isn’t a fair fight. It turns out that a plague of insects is a profoundly effective ally, especially a plague of insects as clever as this one, which bites and burrows into the flesh of the guards, of anyone who tries to stop them, but parts around Beau as she whirls to land a punch. Still, there are more guards than members of the Mighty Nein, and the insects are still centered around the platform, slowly fanning out to bite at the crowd.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s go!” Beau shouts. “Come on!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop them!” snarls a voice, when they cut and run, and Fjord turns back to see the priest with the ugly smile pointing, snarling. Then the wave of insects hits him, and Fjord can’t decide if the swoop in his stomach is horror or gladness as they eat him alive. The big ones land first, coin-sized and iridescent. There is enough space between them on the man’s skin that Fjord can see the welts turn bloody as they bite down, the skin split as they burrow in. They crawl up his sleeves, their old spots on his face and neck and hands taken by new insects.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man howls. At first it sounds like words and then it just sounds like screaming, and Fjord’s used all his revulsion up because his stomach doesn’t even rebel when he watches fat round bodies clamber into his open mouth and eat his tongue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord tears his gaze away, then, and he and Caduceus push the rest of their way to their  friends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Caduceus!” Jester shrieks when she sees him. “I’m sorry I only have healing word but—</span>
  <em>
    <span>stop hurting!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” It’s not enough, Fjord knows. They weren’t prepared for this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a small town, but they’re in the dead center of it, so they have to push their way through the market and the residential districts and then the outlying fields to get to the woods beyond. Some people stand aside and let them pass; others get brave and try to fight. Caleb burns spell after spell, covering them. Fjord pours what little healing he has into Caduceus, cupping his jaw and letting the healing magic sink in when they pause for breath. Caduceus spits blood and holds tight to his arm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sky is darkening. At first Fjord thinks a storm is coming and thinks, great, just what we need. Then Jester gasps and Fjord realizes it is insects, so many that they are blotting out the sun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you do this?” Yasha asks Caduceus, eyes wide.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus shakes his head. Blood drips down his chin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They make it out of the city and into the woods. “Can you teleport us home?” Beau demands, as soon as they’ve cleared sight of the watchtowers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looks pained. “Tomorrow.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you have more healing?” Fjord demands of Jester. Veth is fumbling in her bag and she pulls out a cloth and hands it to Caduceus. Fjord watches him press it to his mouth and then inside it and he swallows down the urge to gag--so the revulsion hasn’t left him after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Only a little,” Jester sounds so miserable. “I’m sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She and Yasha pour everything they have into Caduceus, and still he bleeds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Set up camp,” Beau rasps. Fjord jerks to look at her, wondering if she’s hurt in some way, but then he catches the red rim to her eyes and realizes that she’s just upset and trying to hide it. “Can you do the dome, Caleb?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Caleb says. “That, I can do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll sleep now,” Beau says. “Make the dome, make a campfire, sleep now, we’ll leave first thing when we wake.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you still bleeding?” Yasha asks, quietly. Fjord jerks his gaze back to Caduceus, who has sat down right in the dirt, both hands over his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He draws a hand away and Fjord can see the wet red on his fingertips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have to stop the bleeding,” Caleb says, and Caduceus nods, resigned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha starts the fire while Caleb sets up the dome and the rest of them go through their things, through Caduceus’ medical supplies, sutures and herbs and bandages. Jester cleans out his mouth to look at the wound and then vomits in the bushes. Beau follows her; Fjord can’t let go of Caduceus to do it, just swaps out the bloody rag for a clean one and gently, tentatively, pets his hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s gone,” Jester says, brokenly, when they come back. “It’s—it’s pretty much gone.” She buries her face in Yasha’s shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They decide to cauterize the wound because no one has steady enough hands to stitch it. Fjord sits with Caduceus pulled against his chest, still stroking his hair. Caduceus is still dribbling blood; he soaked three rags before someone just handed him a cup and now he spits more red into it periodically. He says nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Won’t say anything again</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the nasty voice in Fjord’s head says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are we ready?” Beau asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord feels Caduceus nod. It’s barely a movement against his chest, but it feels like being punched when Fjord realizes he will never hear Caduceus say something so simple as ‘yes’ again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb has just enough magic to put him to sleep. For a horrible second Fjord thinks it won’t be enough, but Caduceus is weak enough that even the faint version of the spell that Caleb traces in the air makes his eyes close. He slumps but doesn’t fall to the ground because Fjord is holding him upright against his chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hold him still,” Caleb orders. “He will likely wake when it is done.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uhh,” Fjord is stronger than Caduceus but not confident. Jester, her face still tearstained, sinks down to his right and reaches around to hold Caduceus. Yasha takes his other shoulder. Caleb looks very pale in the firelight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hurry,” Caleb said. “It will last a minute only.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Campfire’s not hot enough,” Beau says. “What’ve you got?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb heats the blade. It’s glowing red-hot in a moment. They all stare at each other, Beau hesitating now that the instrument is in her hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve got small hands,” Veth snaps, breaking the silence. “Hold his head.” She holds out her hand—small, indeed. Beau delicately passes the knife.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Veth crouches right in front of Caduceus. Beau edges over to the side, right by Jester, and tips his mouth open as gently as she can.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck, there’s so much blood in there,” Veth says. “Give me my flask.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is the delicate trade of the knife again as Caleb snags the flask and swaps it out. Veth tips the alcohol into his mouth and then tips his head forward to clear it back out. “Close enough. Knife.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb passes it back and then walks away, far enough that he can’t smell the flesh burning when Veth presses the heated metal to the stump. Caduceus wakes with a strangled cry, but Jester and Yasha’s hands on either side and Beau’s hold on his jaw keeps him still long enough for Veth to withdraw the knife.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus has been very quiet, shockingly quiet, since it happened, some awareness of his inability to speak stilling him from trying. But disoriented and in pain, a low groan is coming out of him, like some wounded animal. He is shaking against Fjord.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester is crying again. Through her tears she casts something and Caduceus relaxes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Calm Emotions,” she says. “It only lasts a little—I don’t know, I couldn’t watch…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good,” Veth says. Everyone else is in some sort of state—shock or tears or both—and she has set her jaw. “Let’s rinse your mouth out, Deucey. There we go.” She gets him to drink from the flask and then spit it out. It comes out red, but then she gives him water and that comes out only pinkish, and the last comes out clear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There we go,” she says again, gentle. Fjord forgets Veth is a mother, sometimes, and then is reminded. “No more bleeding.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spell fades and Caduceus trembles in Fjord’s arms again. No one entreats him to move, even as they douse the fire and set watches and gather close, and Fjord sits there awake until Caduceus falls into a natural sleep against him, and remains awake a long time after.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they rise in the first light of the next morning there is the shell-shocked feeling of having woken from a collective bad dream, except the dream was real. Caduceus is achingly silent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let us pack up,” Caleb says. “Then we can—go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Should we eat something?” Yasha wonders, as they gather their things, strap on armor they won’t need, shove blankets and supplies into packs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Beau says, authoritatively. “We’ll have breakfast at home. Caleb, can you do the circle thing? How long?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It will only take one minute,” Caleb says. “Where—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Home!” Beau says. “Home, take us home.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s the longest minute of Fjord’s life. Caduceus has a white-knuckled grip on his staff. Without thinking about it, Fjord reaches for him and Caduceus comes willingly, folding against him.  Fjord manages a strained smile. Caduceus smiles back with closed lips. Then the circle bursts to life and Caleb says, “Go, go—“ and they’re rushing through, side by side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It only occurs to him, when they are toppling into the Lucid Bastion, that none of them questioned for even a second where Beau meant by ‘home’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels deathly still. Fjord can’t parse the sudden silence for a moment and then he realizes: the buzzing clicking hum of the insects is gone, as though it has never existed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck,” Beau says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We will go home, yes?” Caleb says. “And we will see—what can be done.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord looks at Caduceus. Caduceus just looks tired. There is dried blood at the corners of his mouth that in the predawn light, Fjord couldn’t see. Now he wants to wipe it away but doesn’t want to draw attention to it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Home,” Veth says, following his gaze.  “Then everything else.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they get back to the house, Veth takes charge of breakfast. Caduceus doesn’t even move to help, which is the strongest sign of how badly wrong things are. Fjord gets up to make tea when Caduceus doesn’t, something that smells of lavender. He stirs honey into a cup and brings it to Caduceus and is surprised at the relief in his stomach when it’s accepted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The doorbell rings when she’s setting the table. Jester runs to get it and returns with Essek, and they all shift automatically to make room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was told that you had returned, suddenly and without warning,” Essek announces to the room at large. “There are also reports of a plague of insects that has descended upon the small town of Zeltoria in the Dwendalian Empire, which is near enough to where you were traveling that I must ask if the events are related.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all look at each other. “Uh,” Fjord says. “Any other news out of the town?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Interesting you should ask,” Essek says, and sits down in his usual chair. “The town itself was largely run by the temple of the Lawbearer there, and some reports about small legal conflicts, but I’m afraid it wasn’t enough of interest to the Bright Queen to gather more information. As far as what occurred yesterday, there is not much information to be collected.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they look at him, Essek elaborates. “It appears no one survived.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spoon slips from Jester’s hand. Caleb jerks his chin up to look Essek in the face. Fjord freezes. Beau says, “No,” instinctively. Caduceus makes a small, broken noise in his throat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Perhaps you have more information?” Essek asks, gently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, uh,” Beau shakes her head. “We survived, but the insects weren’t…interested in us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau and Fjord tell the story, Beau telling most of it, Fjord jumping in for the bits she didn’t see. Fjord makes the mistake of glancing at Caduceus, waiting for him to contribute, but it’s up to Fjord to tell their side of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” Essek says. “The Empire will have to consider it an Act of God, quite literally. May I see?” he directs this at Caduceus. Caduceus hesitates and opens his mouth. Essek’s expression, to his credit, does not change.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you are amiable,” he says, “I will send a healer experienced in these sorts of things.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus nods. “Please,” Caleb says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek gets up to go then, but they force him to stay for breakfast. Veth subscribes to the principle that nothing worth doing is not worth overdoing, so she’s made oatmeal and sausages—a little overcooked, although probably from the fact that she got Caleb to defrost them with a fire spell rather than the actual frying—and scrambled eggs with cheese and coffee. Fjord brings the teapot to the table, refills his and Jester’s and Caduceus’ cups, and none of them mention that Caduceus didn’t make it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In some sort of penance for her lack of healing spells the day before, Jester seems to have prepared every option she could and poured them into Caduceus while Veth cooked. As a result, he eats the oatmeal with some apparent difficulty but not pain. Without really discussing it, all of them avoid watching too closely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rhythm of their voices is not too different from before. Caduceus never dominates the conversation. But Fjord still finds himself waiting for him to chime in, glancing at him for input, and only finding him methodically scooping up cinnamon-dusted oats and avoiding their eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It seems as though the Dwendalian Empire is unaware of your involvement in the…incident,” Essek says, when he is finally allowed to depart. “I will let you know if I suspect there to be any danger, however.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you, Essek,” Caleb says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord nods in agreement, although his traitorous mind wonders if all the damage has already been done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek seems to follow the same train of thought, though. “And I will send the healer presently,” he says. “We will see…what can be done.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What can be done is not much, it turns out, although true to Essek’s word the drow woman arrives on their doorstep an hour and a half later. Fjord lets her in and she sits across from Caduceus on the couch to examine him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Open your mouth,” the healer says, and he obliges. “See?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is a pinky’s-width of flesh visible, in the back of his mouth. “There is also a part of your tongue in your throat,” she explains clinically. “That remains. This wasn’t surgically removed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord could have told her that. There was nothing surgical about it. Surgery was clean, necessary—this was sharp and cruel and violent, and filthy and drenched in blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But that does mean that he should swallow just fine, she says, when the pain fades. Might have a little trouble moving food around his mouth, but a utensil would suffice there. It’s his words that are lost—he could call sound from his throat, but there is no way to shape it, form the phrases he is looking for, make it recognizable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Could it—get better?” Yasha is the one who asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“With practice, maybe,” she says. “There are other ways to produce the sounds. Working with a physician...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll find someone,” Caleb says. “If you would like...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus shakes his head. It’s fine, he mouths, and it takes Beau three tries to read his lips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Fjord says to her, a dismissal, but a polite one. She leaves an herb concoction that’s meant to prevent infection and dull pain, and says Essek knows how to contact her.  Fjord walks her to the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just try it,” Jester is saying when he comes back. “Try talking. Maybe you will figure it out like, so fast.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t have to,” Yasha says. “But it is worth a try, I think.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...” Caduceus looks from her to Jester to Fjord to Caleb and on to the rest of them, and tries to say something. A sound comes out of his throat; it is not quite a cry, not quite a groan, but it is not a word.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries again, and this sound is worse, closer to speech and more horrible for it, like a lump of clay with no recognizable form.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Caduceus,” Jester says, all sympathy and horror.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He snaps his mouth shut, turns, and walks up the stairs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus curls up beneath the tree and stays there for three days. Sometimes he pulls himself upright and meditates, which is normal enough to be a calming sight for Fjord, but more often he is sleeping or, the worst, lying there with his eyes open, perfectly still, not sleeping, not meditating. Just staring out at some invisible point of the skyline.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rest of them bicker about what to do, but—wait seems to be the answer. He does acknowledge them, when they come up—Fjord sits with him to meditate, whenever Caduceus can be induced to sit up, and brings him cups of tea that he does drink. Veth brings him food with the air of a cat feeding its kittens, and sometimes he eats that too. Jester comes and talks to him, a thoroughly one-sided conversation, which Caduceus does smile and nod or shake his head in response to, but no one else attempts. The rest of them can’t help but leave spaces for words that will not come.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek comes in the mornings, with more regularity than he has before. Usually, it is news that he comes with, mostly from beyond the border and never good. The insects spread, he says the first day. They grow worse the second, and the third. They leave the occasional spot alone—spare a neighborhood of Hupperdook, where luck would have it a small Kenku girl lives. Leave untouched a single shop in Rexxentrum with a proprietor who once built, on commission, a harp made of bone. But the plague is spreading, he tells them over breakfast, eyes drifting over the empty spot Caduceus leaves at the table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha goes to the roof at night and just lays beside him, sentinel-like. Caduceus curls against her and beneath the glow of the lamps they are a chiaroscuro painting of darkness and light and tangled loops of hair. Fjord comes up early one morning and finds them like that, shoulder to shoulder, and Yasha opens one eye and nods at him as though she is a guard signaling to another.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb throws himself into research, vanishing off with Essek, looking for the right spell. For Caleb, there is always a right spell. Jester asks too, eventually, because Caleb suggests it. Maybe there is a spell, the Traveler tells Jester, but he can’t teach it to her yet. She ignores him for a full day after.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The fourth morning it is raining. Beau—who couldn’t deal with the wait, just vanished without speaking to them—reappears with a stack of books that she drops with a violent thud on the table. Then she storms up to the roof and drags in Caduceus and Yasha, soaked through the both of them, and puts them through a hot bath. Caduceus dresses himself, submits to Veth braiding his hair, comes compliantly down the stairs without a word. Fjord hates the silence with which he does these things and then feels ashamed, because what can Caduceus help it?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau sits him down on the couch. “Seven different kinds of sign language, Deucey,” she announces with a sweep of her hand at the books. “Pick one and we’ll learn it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We will?” Veth asks, doubtfully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You learned fucking goblin, you can learn this,” Beau insists.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Guess we will,” she agrees, after a slight pause.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One of the books is more hand signs for hunters and thieves, not useful for daily conversation. Official Krynn Dynasty sign is bizarrely formal; official Dwendalian sign gets set aside without opening. They end up picking halfling over elvish because the finger-spelling and word invention is easier, and that quells the last of Veth’s reluctance because she refuses to be beat in “[her] own fucking language.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb picks it up quickest, which Fjord is surprised at not at all. Fjord does alright; better with the memory of it than the motions, which are slow and clumsy even though he practices at night in the dark.  It’s fine. Caduceus can hear just fine; as long as Fjord can understand him, it doesn’t matter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus himself is slow to learn it, although his long thin fingers move deftly, well-suited to the movements if not the meaning. For about a week he doesn’t say much outside the context of Beau’s lessons, which are held daily and no one is exempt from, all of them sprawled out in the sitting area.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus stands up from one of Beau’s sign language classes, about a week in, and signs, “Want lunch?” to the room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, thank you,” Caleb says, Fjord nods, and the half of them who weren’t looking snap their heads up and Caduceus repeats it, and he has a lot to say after that. Fjord wants to weep in relief every time Caduceus looks at them and lifts his hands to talk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord finds that it’s lucky to have an excuse to look at him: in case he has something to say. That’s all it is—looking for words, not double-checking that what has been taken from him is not so vital he will one day simply disappear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is always more news. The clouds of insects last for weeks, sweeping back and forth across the country. They vanish for a time and then return, picking away at crops at best and people at worst. Animals in the fields are eaten alive--dairy farmers confine their cows to the barn, wary of finding their half-devoured corpses in the fields in the morning, still crawling with beetles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Worse are the people who go missing. At first the Dwendalian Empire tries to make a diplomatic incident out of it, Essek reports, but then the corpses turn back up, half-devoured, not far from where they vanished. The easier ones to look at are picked clean, but all of them are devoid of their soft fleshy parts. The eye sockets are always emptied, dark pits surrounded by rotting, bitten flesh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then comes the news of a drought, during a season when there should be rain. Plants withered away. Vegetables are pale and shriveled when they grow at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But in Xhorhas, there is rain. Sleeping on the roof as he does, Caduceus can hardly miss it; there is more sun than the usual, too, he thinks, or maybe he dreams that. Beneath the tree he planted, he does feel safe; the leaves grow rich and green, the plants flowering and vegetables growing fat and ripe on the vine. A good season.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It occurs to him that this is the hand of the Wildmother, of course. It does not occur to him until Essek comes that it has reached further beyond his own rooftop garden.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek bears a basket, packed with fruit—round crisp red apples, plump pomegranates, soft and juicy peaches.  The plums have smooth thin skin and dark red flesh that drips sweet juice when you bite in—Fjord freezes a little when he sees the red dripping from Caduceus’ mouth and down his hand, but of course it’s nothing, too thin and purple. Caduceus tries to lick the trailing juice from his fingers absently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Xhorhas, Essek tells them, is having an unprecedented harvest—cranberry bogs overflowing, plum trees growing heavy and dark with fruit, even the root vegetables and fungi that dark-skied Rosohna cultivates multiplying like never before.  And little green plants are poking their way out of the earth, even in places too dark for them, spreading little green leaves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I confess I don’t understand it,” says Essek. “Or what it means, but—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus holds his fingers to his lips, hand flat, and extends it to Essek. He glances at Fjord, and then continues signing. Essek stays quiet. Caduceus has always been too easy to interrupt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Fjord translates. “Is...what it means. To Xhorhas. From the Wildmother. For being a home to us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And thank you,” Fjord adds. “Caduceus says, and me too. For the fruit, and—everything.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is less than you have done for me,” Essek says. “I am glad this place could be a home to you.  Regardless of the blessings of your god.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The awkwardness dissolves over time between Caduceus and Fjord. At first every silence reminds Fjord of the slice of that knife, but normalcy resettles itself. They sit facing each other in the garden—Fjord comes up after working out with Beau and finds Caduceus tending the plants, most days, and they meditate together silently. Caduceus doesn’t talk to the trees as much—it’s hard to prune and weed and speak with your hands at the same time—but Fjord spots him at it occasionally, signing upwards into the towering branches and canisters of light. Sometimes he hums to them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One morning when Fjord opens his eyes again, Caduceus begins to say, “I want to ask you something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, what?” Fjord asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The trap door rattles as someone bangs on the other side. “Come to sign language class!” Jester hollers, and then there’s the thud of her feet on the ground.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll ask it after,” Caduceus says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have a minute before someone comes after us with a weapon,” Fjord says, but Caduceus shakes his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It might take some time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Fjord goes down, reluctant in his own curiosity. Caduceus seems a little nervous, which is unlike him. Fjord knows he is frustrated, is grieving, even if he shows it rarely, but fear rarely plays in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” Beau says. “So did you…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus shakes his head. Then he goes to her and signs something swiftly, hands held between their bodies so Fjord can’t see what it is. Veth cranes her neck to look, leans forward far enough to fall off the chair, but when Fjord taps her with a questioning look, she shakes her head disappointed. Jester, next to Beau, has gotten very wide eyes, so she might have seen, but she won’t let Fjord make eye contact, so that’s also a bust.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright!” Beau looks almost gleeful when Caduceus goes to his usual spot on the floor. “Let’s get started!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau shoots sideways looks at Fjord throughout the lesson, and Jester is giggling more than usual. He wonders if his own eagerness to get back up to the garden, to finish the conversation, is so obvious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But she doesn’t actually say anything, and right up to the end, Fjord thinks he might have escaped it. Then she says, blandly, “One more. This,” she holds her hand up like she’s waving and then folds her middle and ring fingers down into her palm, “is I love you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord feels abruptly transparent, like someone’s dumped a bucket of cold water on him, but Beau is thankfully looking at someone else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha lifts her hand and mimics it, and turns it towards them all, one at a time. Jester fumbles it back, and Veth signs it to Caleb before the others, and then makes a big show about whether or not she’s going to include Fjord, and the feeling of being too visible diminishes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are still butterflies in his gut when he goes back up to the garden, afterwards. Caduceus follows, but hesitates behind him, letting Fjord decide whether to look for what he has to say. Fjord steels himself and turns to face him.  He only startles a little—Caduceus is standing closer than he realized, barely a foot between them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, your question from earlier...” Fjord says. He thinks he has a guess, but really it’s more of a hope, but he could be misreading things...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can I kiss you?” Caduceus signs, point blank.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Fjord says, too quickly, and then Caduceus leans in and kisses him, soft and close-mouthed and Fjord doesn’t try to push him further, draws him in by tightening his arms around him instead, and Caduceus gives up on speech to put his own arms around Fjord’s neck, reach up and card through his hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus breaks the kiss, after a moment, and Fjord surges upward to kiss him again, finding no other way to reassure him it isn’t unwelcome. They’re both a little breathless by the time they stop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You good?” Fjord asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus does a thumbs up. He seems to take the question more broadly, because he signs, “I miss doing magic. I want to be more help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think it will come back to you eventually,” Fjord says. “The casting. And as long as we both live, whatever voice you need, you must know you have mine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you,” Caduceus signs, and then grins at him. There’s a flash of teeth, barely, a little segment of his guard letting down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you too,” Fjord laughs. “Fucking Beau. How did she know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I asked,” Caduceus signs, plainly. Fjord can read the sheepish edge of his smile, although there is the glint in his eye that says he isn’t really ashamed. With the limited sign he has, he lacks the capacity to prevaricate, and he’s a straightforward person besides. Voice or not, he has found a way to let Fjord into the heart of him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They pretend nothing has changed for about three days, except Caduceus is a terrible liar and Fjord finds himself annoyed by pretending and Jester walks in on them kissing and </span>
  <em>
    <span>shrieks, </span>
  </em>
  <span>“I knew it!”, her voice echoing around the house, and then of course it’s pointless. It feels like almost everyone already knew.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The perks are numerous; Fjord leans against the counter stealing bits while Caduceus cooks, and when Caduceus snatches at his wrist to stop him he gets kisses instead. Fjord sits on the couch and Caduceus on the floor, resting his cheek on Fjord’s knee. Fjord plays with his hair every second it’s in reach. And Caduceus smiles more, like the old Caduceus, or like the new one who either forgets sometimes what he is missing or has simply decided he cannot, will not care anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is raining a lot, the good heavy kind with days in between to let it sink into the soil, more than the blighted region usually gets but never too much at once. Someone is cherry-picking their weather. The days that aren’t rainy are of course not sunny, because Rosohna, but it feels as though more of the golden light makes it in than usual.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rain is a feeble excuse to bring Caduceus downstairs into Fjord’s room instead of sleeping alone on the roof. The beautiful days in between are an even feebler one, to explain why Fjord sometimes embraces rooftop camping. But who cares? They are surrounded by friends, who all know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are no pressing matters. Jester paints and sends messages and skips around the city bringing the message of the Traveler to the bewildered citizenry. Yasha plays the harp, and reads, and wanders on the stormy days. Caleb and Veth spend a lot of time in his laboratory, or at libraries, sometimes just them and sometimes with Essek. Beau does research and drags Fjord into her exercise routines and she and Jester and Yasha explore the city together. Caduceus works in his garden, and cooks, and prays, and smiles a little more as the days go by.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries to cast spells, sometimes. Fjord suspects he usually does it all alone, but sometimes Fjord is allowed to be there, watching. The signs do not work, even though his speech with them has become something almost natural. The rare occasions he attempts to use his voice do not, either. Always the words stop and start, hard consonants tripping him up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord asks him why the signing doesn’t work. He’s heard of it working before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have to—believe. To know. I think signing still feels like—a cypher. It is not me talking,” Caduceus says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In other words: </span>
  <em>
    <span>it is not that this language is inadequate in itself, but that it is inadequate for me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>In other words, Caduceus has lost something and it is not regained.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Fjord says, softly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not,” Caduceus signs, then repeats it. “I’m not, I’m not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Indeed, there is anger and sorrow that lives in Caduceus, but no regret. No regret for their perfect rain, their perfect sunshine, a whole empire prospering for the sake of the shelter they have offered for a handful of creatures.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No regret for the daily reports of havoc across the border. The insects, which come every few months, and pick the few plants that grow bare, and leave rotting corpses behind. The drought, which lasts too long into the growing season, and then the heavy rains, which sweep away the light dry soil and the shallow roots with them. There is a pestilence in the water. More rocks crumble than usual, in the mountains.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stories vary, but they end the same way. Things are destroyed. People are dead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Refugees, Essek says, are beginning to come. Most go towards the Menagerie Coast, but for some that is too far, a journey for which there are not enough provisions held to survive. So they come to Xhorhas because they have no choice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus does not regret, but he is sad. Fjord is, too. He is angry, so angry, but it is hard to direct that anger at the frightened people suffering. He is angry at that priest, at King Dwendal, at the people who wrenched Caduceus’s jaw open to admit a blade. These people suffering now had nothing to do with it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can we do anything?” Fjord asks, finally.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do what?” Caduceus asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know…ta-say something, to the Wildmother?” Fjord tries to avoid words like ‘talk’ and ‘speak’ even though Caduceus doesn’t react to them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I already told her that I forgave them,” Caduceus admits, fingers hesitating on the word ‘forgive’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What did she say?” Fjord says, before remembering that whatever Caduceus told her, he didn’t use a spell, didn’t necessarily get a reply.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Caduceus answers, “She says that she doesn’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is a goddess furious on their behalf. Fjord has never benefited from a parent’s righteous anger, and he is frightened by it and comforted all at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Mighty Nein has no need to go anywhere and have decided, collectively and without words, that they will stay here for a time. Fjord shares a bed with Caduceus and sleeps better for it, waking sometimes tangled in Caduceus’s hair, laughing before he’s even awake because Caduceus is kissing him or pressing his icy-cold fingers into the ticklish spot on Fjord’s ribs or both. There is a moment that Fjord breaks from kissing him and Caduceus breaths, “Fjor—“ soft and deep, no hard stop, but recognizable all the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord can live like this, he decides, because Caduceus can live like this. They can be happy like this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That, of course, is when the dream comes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord wakes too early one morning because Caduceus does. They are sleeping in the shelter on the roof, and a fine silver mist has settled around them, like a wafer-thin sheet of low-hanging cloud. Normally they wake after all the dew has burned off, but it’s still predawn when Caduceus jerks bolt-upright in Fjord’s arms, startling him into wakefulness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s wrong?” Fjord asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus twists in his arms to face him and puts his hands between them. “Dream,” he signs briefly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A bad dream?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hesitates. “I don’t know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“From the Wildmother?” Fjord hazards.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No. I don’t think so.” They have a sign for the Wildmother, picked themselves, a mix of the signs for </span>
  <em>
    <span>god </span>
  </em>
  <span>and </span>
  <em>
    <span>earth </span>
  </em>
  <span>and </span>
  <em>
    <span>mother</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Caduceus doesn’t use it; he’s spelling something with his fingers. </span>
  <em>
    <span>E-R-A-T-H-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Erathis?” Fjord asks, and Caduceus nods. “The Lawbearer? What did she say?” Fjord doesn’t like the sound of that. Can’t shake the image from his head of her priest with the evil smile, the one who watched.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus takes some time to organize his thoughts about it. He seems unsettled, which is what confirms to Fjord that he’s right about it not being the Wildmother. Those dreams, even ones where the contents are potentially unsettling, leave him waking feeling warm and protected. This was not one of those dreams. Eventually he yawns and resettles, brushes his sleep-tangled hair over his shoulder, and explains.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dreamed that I was standing in Zadash, and all the trees were wilted, and there were no vegetables for sale, and there was chaos in the streets. But all of the people, crying or fighting or shouting, none of them noticed me except for a woman in armor.  A woman in armor with a hood over her face, who spoke my name, and I went to her, and she said—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus takes care to spell out the next sections letter by letter. Halfling sign is never a direct translation from Common, and Caduceus’s grammar is particularly odd, picking the words he needs to be understood by his friends rather than a proper speaker of the language. Here, he wants to convey what was said exactly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“—‘This was once a place of light and order and civilization. It might be again. Will you help me to restore it?’”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pauses after that, and Fjord prompts, “What did you say?” even though he knows Caduceus isn’t waiting to be prompted, is just collecting his thoughts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That I am a servant of light but not order or civilization, and she should look for someone better suited,” Caduceus replies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Was she angry?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus shrugs. “She said, ‘I have asked one of mine. I ask that you also give your aid.’”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord waits, this time, and Caduceus hesitates and then admits, “I told her I don’t have anything to give. And then I turned from her, and I woke.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did it feel like—what did it feel like?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus shrugs again. “A question or a—test. I don’t know. Did I fail?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Fjord says. “You don’t owe her anything.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Caduceus says, but he doesn’t lose the troubled look for a long time, not until they’re downstairs at breakfast and the day has begun and the dream, like the mist, has melted into memory.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t owe her anything,” Fjord repeats, when he catches Caduceus frowning at the kettle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He startles. “That’s not it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is it? Something’s bothering you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In the dream...” Caduceus touches his fingers to his mouth unconsciously. “I could speak again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Fjord says, because the expression on Caduceus’s face makes him ache inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I forgot that I missed it,” he finally signs. “Now I remember.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord knows that Caduceus keeps having dreams because he keeps waking at odd times, but he doesn’t mention the contents again and Fjord doesn’t push him, except to ask him if he wants to talk about it. “It’s the same,” he signs in response.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The same—a goddess is asking Caduceus to do something for her, and he is refusing. Fjord knows what that’s like, turning down a powerful being—hell, spitting in the face of something that terrifies him, telling him he doesn’t need it—but of course that’s new for Caduceus. Caduceus always knew he was meant to serve the Wildmother, and has never doubted it. This dynamic with the Lawbearer is new to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a week of this, Fjord has his own dream. He is in a small house. The house is neat but not in good shape despite the evident care the owner has taken. There is no dirt, every item is in its place, but the walls sag, the paint peels, the roof leaks. A dark-haired woman sits at an altar, head bowed, waiting for something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s already inside, in this dream, but he feels like an intruder, so he knocks on the inside of the front door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She jumps, whirls around. “You are—oh, good. This is a spell,” she says. “I wanted to talk to you. My name is Amala. I am a cleric of the Lawbearer Erathis.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord stiffens. “Your goddess has been bothering my—“ he has gotten ahead of himself. What is Caduceus to him? More than a friend, now, surely. He decides to just brazen on and hope that she missed the word he’d started with. “—Caduceus Clay, a cleric of the Wildmother. Shouldn’t she be bothering you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know what happened in Zeltoria,” she says in a rush. “I can fix it, I want to fix it. I can’t get to Xhorhas, they won’t let people cross the border without interviews and papers and things now that so many people are trying to flee the—they say it’s a curse, of the Wildmother upon us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fix what?” Fjord asks. “The curse? If it’s the Wildmother doing it—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What was done,” she says. “To your—“ so she hadn’t missed it after all “—cleric. I can fix it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A spell,” she says. “The Lawbearer, she taught it to me.” She gestures at the altar. There is a symbol of Erathis, a prayer wheel, a law text. “If you come here, I can fix it. We can make this right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where are you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A little town about an hour from the border with Xhorhas,” she says. “Alterin. The people here grow wheat, mostly, or they used to before the rot. Will you come?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I—“ Fjord shakes his head. “I’ll ask. I don’t know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please come,” she says. “We are suffering. I know wrong was done. But this has to end. Please.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll try,” Fjord says, because she looks—miserable. Even in the dream, she looks miserable, too thin, dark circles under her eyes. She’s a few years older than Fjord, probably, but looks even older.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” she says, and makes a motion, and the dream dissolves. He doesn’t wake immediately, he doesn’t think, but it’s still the first thing on his mind when he does open his eyes in the morning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t dream,” Caduceus signs, when Fjord’s movements cause him to stir. The sun is well above the horizon, a longer sleep than Caduceus has gotten in a while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I did,” Fjord says, and tells him everything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After Caduceus, Fjord repeats it to the rest of the Nein over breakfast.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, you’re going, aren’t you?” Beau says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t owe it to the Empire to fix this,” Veth points out, shoving bacon into her mouth. “I mean, it sucks, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Plenty of people who had nothing to do with it are being hurt,” Caleb notes, buttering a piece of toast.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t care about the empire,” Yasha says. “What was done to Caduceus, she said she could fix it, yes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Fjord says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then go,” Yasha says, and that ends the conversation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you want to—“ Fjord double-checks with Caduceus when it’s just them, shooed from the kitchen by Jester and Caleb, who are on dish-washing duty today.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus nods a yes, and so Fjord goes to ask Essek about the best way to get to Alterin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After Fjord tells him the whole story, Essek agrees to teleport them to the border. It takes a day for him to make arrangements, which makes Fjord suspect that the endeavor might be sort of a problem for him politically, but he doesn’t ask and Essek doesn’t offer the information.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They go early. It is still chilly in Xhorhas, but the sun is clearly bright and rising once they’re out of Rosohna. Over the border, it’s a different story. The sky grows dark with thick clouds not five minutes’ walk from the edge, and they walk a muddy, broken road as hailstones begin to plummet. Fjord flinches instinctively, at first, but none of them ever hit—in fact, they seem to fall in a circle around them instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s terrifying. It’s comforting. Fjord is getting used to this feeling, when it comes to the Wildmother.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because the war ended so recently, there are not many settlements near the border. Alterin is the first town they reach. It is small and miserable-looking, a settlement of one-story houses huddled together against a world attempting to destroy it. Fields are empty or rotted. As they walk through the town, no one comes to greet them for a long minute.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fjord!” someone shouts. “Caduceus Clay!” It’s the woman he dreamed of. She bolts towards them, flinching from the hailstones. One clips her shoulder and she winces; Fjord hurries forward to envelop her in their circle of protection.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come in,” she says. “I’m Amala Riad, a cleric of the Lawbearer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you doing all the way out here?” Fjord asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I grew up here,” she says. “I worked in a temple in Zadash, but I came home when—things got bad. Then the dreams started. It took me this long to learn what I needed to, but I can fix it now. Come here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the little well-kept, falling-down house Fjord dreamed of, Amala beckons them to the shrine. Caduceus sits in front of her and lets her touch his face, murmuring some sort of incantation or maybe a prayer, touching the prayer wheel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the silences between the lines of her spell, the hail strikes hard on the roof. Water drips into a pail beneath the leak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally she reaches forward and he opens his mouth to allow her to slip her fingers inside. Fjord can’t tell if he sees some sort of energy flow from her, or it’s his imagination.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It will take a couple minutes,” she says, withdrawing her hand.  “But it will—I think it will be unpleasant, but—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she says that, Fjord reaches and grips Caduceus’ free hand. He already has the other pressed firmly over his mouth, frozen, some sort of grimace on his features. Fjord reaches up to put the other hand on his shoulder, to hold him steady.  Amala murmurs another prayer to Erathis.  The hail continues to pound hard on the roof.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a space of seconds, Fjord isn’t sure if it’s working. Then Caduceus gasps and almost--constricts, folding in on himself. His hold tightens on Fjord’s hand. It hurts, but Fjord doesn’t try to pull away. Caduceus whimpers into the hand over his mouth. Then he gags, and coughs into his palm. Fjord gets a glimpse of red before Caduceus has folded himself entirely into Fjord’s chest, shaking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Amala is still speaking, and Fjord is too afraid to interrupt even though he wants to spit at her because </span>
  <em>
    <span>unpleasant </span>
  </em>
  <span>doesn’t cut it. He just wraps his arms around Caduceus and holds him and waits for it to pass.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The prayer subsides. The hail does not. Caduceus gives a final shudder and then straightens, turning away, fingers probing at his mouth. There is bloody phlegm in his palm; he wipes it absently on his coat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord lets Caduceus go when he stands, because he is too frozen in place to do otherwise.  Amala looks at him and then at the hailstones shuddering past outside the window.  “It didn’t work?” she opens the door, but the weather has not abated. “Come, I’ll try again—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It worked,” Caduceus says, not turning. His voice is—Fjord had forgotten how good his voice was, slow and deep and sure.  All his muscles unlock at once and he’s moving to throw his arms around him. Caduceus hugs him back, fiercely. “Hello, Fjord.  Oh, that’s—Fjord.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Caduceus,” Fjord half-laughs, half-weeps.  He didn’t even dream of this, didn’t dare hope for it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But it’s still—“ Amala looks distraught.  “Look!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord reluctantly turns enough to look.  She is pointing through the open door.  Still it is hailing.  The stones echo on the roof.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If this were a punishment of the Lawbearer,” Caduceus says, “You would be right, I think. Injustice has been righted.  The punishment can end.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then why hasn’t it?” she says.  “I’m sorry, I—people are dying...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What does nature care for justice?” Caduceus shrugs.  “The Wildmother does not punish you for being unjust.  When you care for nature, it cares for you; when you do not care for it, you suffer its destruction.  Justice has nothing to do with it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then what do I do?” she sinks to her knees.  “I dreamed about you—I thought—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fjord,” Caduceus says, and Fjord will never get sick of hearing his name in Caduceus’ voice as long as he lives, “Can I borrow your symbol?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord unpins it and hands it over unquestioningly.  Caduceus goes to the door and steps out, kneels in the little patch of dirt shielded from the overhang of the roof.  He holds the pin out in front of him as a focus—Fjord is reminded all over again of the missing staff, unnecessary for a cleric who could cast no spells, who needed his hands to speak anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wildmother,” he says, slowly.  “They have not been good custodians of your land here, or your plants, your animals or your people.  And that has cost them.  But they want to grow better things.  I would ask that you give them the chance, to show they can learn.  They have sown, and reaped.  It’s time to plant again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord closes his eyes as Caduceus speaks, letting the sound wash over him. The last time he heard Caduceus’s voice feels like a lifetime ago, in that cell. He didn’t know Caduceus loved him then. Caduceus didn’t know Fjord felt the same. Neither of them had any idea what the next season would cost them, or that they would come here and get it back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He opens his eyes when Caduceus touches his arm. While Fjord was lost in thought, he’d withdrawn from the doorway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it—?” Amala is looking out the door. “Is it stopping?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus shrugs. “It is Her will, not mine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The hail doesn’t stop right away. But the hailstones seem to fall less heavy on the roof, going from stones the size of a fist to pebbles to grains of sand, and finally melt into a faint cold rain, barely more substantial than mist.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Amala bursts into tears. “Thank you,” she says, wiping hurriedly at her face. “Thank you for—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is Her will, not mine,” Caduceus says again. “I have made a promise on your behalf and it’s up to you to keep it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anything,” she says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do better,” Fjord says. “There can’t be forbidden gods. There can’t be cruelty to the people who worship them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know if I…” she falters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can,” Caduceus says. “You have seen what the Wildmother’s anger looks like. Imagine what her kindness or her mercy might be, and ask for that.” He smiles, and Fjord can see the subtle difference again all of a sudden, how much more easily he opens his mouth, the absent flicker of hesitation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We will,” she says. “I promise, I—do you want to, you could come with me, and—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your Lawbearer will guide you,” Caduceus says. “You’ll find your path. Fjord and I need to go home.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a long, slow walk through the misty rain home. It’s still strange, and saddening, this desolate landscape. They walk through the pitted roads full of melted hailstones, surrounded by dead grasses. But Caduceus talks the whole way—at first hesitantly, and then the words spilling out, as though all the silence of the past few months has left him with a deep reservoir of things to say and he is trying to empty it all on their walk back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord is in turn mostly quiet. He holds Caduceus’s hand and can’t stop grinning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m talking a lot, aren’t I,” Caduceus says, about ten minutes into the journey.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Fjord says. “Please don’t stop.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek still waits for them at the border. “I noticed a change in the weather,” he comments, greeting and fishing for information all at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus doesn’t keep him waiting. “Yes,” he says. “I think it’s going to turn out to be a beautiful day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then let’s return,” Essek says, and they each take one of his hands and he teleports them home, to the street outside the Xhorhouse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you coming in?” Fjord asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek shakes his head. “I will come by later. I need to update the Bright Queen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know how things will turn out,” Fjord warns. “But it might be—over, sort of, for now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We will monitor the situation,” he says. “I am glad to hear your voice again, Caduceus.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Caduceus says. “Me too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They head up the steps. At the top, Caduceus reaches for the doorbell and Fjord stops him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hold on.” He slides the key into the lock instead, gently, turns it quiet as a mouse. When they step inside, no one is in the entryway. Caduceus copies his careful steps even though he’s clearly confused. When he opens his mouth, Fjord raises a hand to forestall him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You better tell them we’re back,” Fjord signs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caduceus grins—bright, mischievous, unhindered. He is the one who calls, “We’re home!” and Fjord hears running on the stairs, hears someone shouting in response, and he’s grinning back even before he sees the looks on their faces.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>EDIT: Author reveals are up! Thanks are owed to my beta Bluebird for saying "this could be grosser" and to Mary Oliver, from whose poem "In Blackwater Woods" the title is derived.</p><p>If you can, please leave a comment, they mean a lot. &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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